I invite you to turn with me tonight to Romans 6, as we read together that chapter, in connection with our confessional reference, question and answer 2 of Lord's Day 1. I would also ask you to turn in the back of the Psalter hymnal to page 8. Together, let's confess what we believe in question and answer to before we turn to the Word of God, Romans chapter 6. If you would respond together in unison by reading the answer after I read the question. Lord's Day 1, question and answer to of the Heidelberg Catechism, page 8, bottom of the page. Beloved, what must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? Three things. First, how great my sin and misery are. Second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery. Third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance. Those three things Paul addresses in Romans chapter 6. We read now the Word of God, beginning at verse 1. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means. Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey Him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey? Whether you are slaves to sin which leads to death or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves, just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness. So now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let's bow together in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, indeed we thank You and praise You for Your Word, Your truth, which You use by Your Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us into all truth. And Father, we pray that You would open up Your Word tonight through Your servant, by the power of Your Spirit, that our hearts and lives might be opened as well, that we might enjoy increase and strengthening in knowledge of the great comfort that You've given to Your people in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And Father, we pray that through it we might ever live to serve You, to praise You, to glorify and enjoy You forever. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray these things. Amen. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, The sacraments, as we said a few weeks ago in connection with Belgic Confession, Article 33, the sacraments confirm to our eyes, boys and girls, they verify to our eyes the gospel that we hear with our ears. The sacraments are visible sermons, sermons that we can see of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And therefore, with regard to the Lord's table, we can say that the message of the Lord's table is indeed about our only comfort in life and in death. As answer one of the catechisms says again, of this comfort, that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. Why? He has fully paid for all my sin with His precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation. And then we might say, so what? Because I belong to Him, Christ by His Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him. Now, beloved, that comfort is real comfort. that comfort is enduring comfort. It's not temporary. It's not imitation. It will not fade away. It will not wear off like comfort food. But it is eternal comfort. And this comfort is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling. Instead, it has substance. And that substance is Jesus Christ Himself. He is the Christian's comfort and He alone gives true comfort. But then it's not enough simply to talk about this comfort. To say nice things about this comfort. To speak of it. You and I must have it. We must own it as our very own. It must be real. In your heart and in mine. And for those who truly have this comfort, it will not just sit idle in them, but it will be a deep, motivating principle in their whole life. It will motivate them. They will give evidence of living in the joy of true comfort. You see, beloved, salvation must be joyful. How can it not be? To know that one is saved by grace through faith, earned by the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ, how can that not be joyful? If one truly has the joy of salvation, How can that not be evident in His words or through His actions? Or how can it not be seen on His face? And that's the point, isn't it? It's really not possible to have this only true comfort and then not consciously live in the joy of having it. Question one again asks, What is your only comfort in life and in death? And question two goes a little bit further. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? In other words, how does it become real to me? How does it become my very own? Jesus Christ is the only comfort, but He becomes the believers by the operation of the Holy Spirit through true faith. And through faith, the Holy Spirit gives us joy as he brings us to know my sin and misery, to know the only Savior, and to know how I am to give thanks. Again, that which Paul speaks of in Romans chapter 6 as well throughout many other passages of Scripture, but here is one of those places. Now many of us, of course, know the abbreviation of those three things in answer to as guilt, grace, gratitude, or sin, salvation, and service. And what a beautiful and necessary order this is. It's not grace, gratitude, guilt, or gratitude, guilt, and then grace, or any other combination of the three, but it's guilt, grace, gratitude, sin, salvation, and service. Because the disease must be known before the remedy is prescribed. And the remedy must be effective before gratitude or thankfulness can come. And we need to understand that when the catechism talks about knowledge, it's talking about not simply head knowledge, it's talking about the knowledge of true faith that knows what the Bible says, believes it, and trusts that it's for me too, that Jesus Christ is my Savior. And as we come to know these three things by faith, not only do we have comfort for this life, but also in death. One of the greatest treasures the saint has is to have this comfort in death. But that's foreign to the world, isn't it? That's completely foreign to the world. The unbeliever has no, in fact, cannot have true comfort in death because he rejected the God of all comfort in life. And our comfort in death, beloved, is not that it will necessarily be pain-free or problem-free as far as the world is concerned or the things of the world, but it is free of the fear of the unknown. As Paul says, for the believer, to be away from the body is to be present with the Lord. Beloved, living in the joy of true comfort involves, first of all, knowing my sin and misery. Now notice, it's not a question of if I have sin and misery. But do I know how great it is? Now how do we truly know that we have sin and misery? After all, we're surrounded by a world that so often doesn't see sin as sin. Sin is a dirty word. Maybe not a dirty four-letter word, but a dirty three-letter word. And the world doesn't like to talk about sin. To the unbelieving world, sin is the other guy's problem. And I'm simply affected by the other guy. The difficulties and the problems and the mistakes of people, not the sin of people, but the difficulties, problems, and mistakes of people are due to their environment or some sort of a defective gene. But it's not sin. You see, apart from the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, though sin is indeed evident all around us, Yet, apart from that work of the Holy Spirit, we don't know that we are sinners. And that's why knowing our guilt is indeed a matter of true faith, which understands and believes God's Word as it reveals our sin and misery. In Romans 6, verse 1, Paul says, Shall we go on sinning? In verse 6, he says, For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. In verse 17, though you used to be slaves to sin. And this is just a couple of instances in one chapter. Paul's point, as the whole of Scripture teaches us, is that man's life is characterized by sin. Sin is a master that reigns over the unregenerate person. Jesus says in Matthew 9, verse 12, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. And He Himself is the balm of Gilead to heal the people of God. In Romans 3, we know that Paul quotes the psalmist when he says, there is no one righteous, not even one. And he also says, therefore all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We know that David says in Psalm 51 that we are conceived in sin. Our sin and our misery, beloved, is a demonstrated and a proven fact, isn't it? Each and every day, moment by moment. I'm not just talking about the other guy. Look at yourself. Look at myself. It's a demonstrated and proven fact. Yet, we are called to know how great are our sins and misery. Not that they're wonderful, of course. How terrible they are. See, not one of us is a borderline sinner. Did you ever think about that? Not one of us is a borderline sinner where here's a line and you've just stepped over on the sinning side. But over here you're okay. And we get a pretty good idea of just how great is our sin and misery when Paul says that we used to be slaves to sin. That's a powerful word picture. Boys and girls, slaves to sin. Slaves that work under bondage to sin. That all they do is seek to satisfy sin. And Paul also says, for the wages of sin is death. Pointing to the greatness of it. The terribleness. And the Bible says in another place, the soul that sins, it shall die. And this death, of course, is eternal death. It's total separation from the Lord of life. And one sin, beloved, one sin, which of course we can't even imagine only committing one sin, but one sin is enough to condemn a person to eternal damnation. Adam's one sin condemned the whole human race. Now we know that out of the heart flows the issues of life, the Bible says. And Jeremiah 17, verse 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. But what is our reformed theological phrase to describe this? Man is totally depraved. Boys and girls, depravity means sinful. Total means total. Totally sinful. Every thought, every word or action or motive or desire or decision, everything about man is corrupt and stained with sin. As Isaiah says, even our best works are as filthy rags. Beloved, this hard truth is how it is for us in and of ourselves. And this truth is what the Holy Spirit convicts us of. But knowing this isn't very comforting, is it? That's what the question asks. What must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? First, how great my sins and misery are. That seems so strange, so backwards. How is that comforting? To be told how bad you are? If somebody tells you you're a lousy person, that's not very comforting, is it? Yet, this isn't very joyful news, it seems. Yet, this knowledge, this heartfelt knowledge and conviction of sin is necessary for true comfort and joyful living. This indeed is the proper starting point because only when we know and understand the true state of things, only when we understand by God's grace our true helpless, hopeless condition will we then be driven to seek help from outside ourselves. True knowledge of our sin and misery is to drive us to desire to be delivered. When you know you have a sickness or a disease, then you desire to have the medicine to take that disease away. With no knowledge of sin. There will be no desire for deliverance. And that's why so many reject the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why you can get so many blank stares if you do try to give testimony to witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. Because so many have no idea. I'm not a sinner. Okay, I'm not perfect, but I'm not that bad, you see. I don't need a Savior. But the Bible is clear, beloved, that God gives deliverance to those who by His grace and Spirit desire it. Isaiah 57 verse 15 says, For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with him who has a contrite and humble spirit to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. And Jesus said in Matthew 5, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Congregation, true comfort comes from outside of ourselves. And therefore, the terror of sin, of our sin, is to our advantage. It's for our good. It drives us to look away from ourselves. It is meant to humble us because true knowledge of our sin and misery gives us a true picture of who and what we are. And only when we understand that, as converted people, you see, we can only understand it when we are already converted by the power of the Spirit. And we look back, huh? We look back and say, I saw the Lord, but afterward I knew. He moved my soul to seek Him seeking me. It's only with that new heart and that new mind that we understand the truth of ourselves, but only when we understand that. Only when we know the greatness of evil will the Gospel profit us and will we be thankful for the fullness and the greatness of God's deliverance. Only when we understand how far down God has reached to pick us up and how high He has placed us in the heavenlies, as Paul says, will we even begin to desire to give thanks. You see, if someone rescues you from a burning building where your life is in danger, you will be more thankful than if one helps you change a flat tire. He'll be thankful for that help too, but not quite as much as if your life was in danger. Beloved, what is your attitude towards sin? Your sin. Are you humbled by it? Or is it simply the problem of the next guy? Whoever doesn't comprehend something of the depths of his sin and misery is like the rich young ruler who after having rehearsed all the good that he did, He could only say, well, what do I yet lack? Knowledge that even one sin eternally separates you from God must be humbling. The moment Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, that which the Lord's table points to, namely, the need for salvation, was necessary. And you know, that need continued to be demonstrated throughout the history of the Old Testament, throughout the last 2,000 years, even today, even for you and me, we constantly demonstrate why we have a need for salvation. But those who rush over the need for knowledge of guilt, will then not even come. They won't even come to the second part of this necessary knowledge. But we must confess to our comfort as believers that we will never know just how great our sin and misery are because Jesus Christ took our sin and misery upon Himself. yet to live in the joy of true comfort we can and we must know the only Savior. Now here we talk about the grace of salvation. I must know how I am set free from all of my sins and misery. Knowledge of sin without knowledge of deliverance from it. As we heard this morning, knowledge of our sin without the assurance of pardon for forgiveness would lead one to despair, would cast us into the depths of hopelessness. One commentator says that knowledge of sin and misery is like a pit without an opening or like night without a morning. But you see, beloved, that pit is opened up and that morning light dawns when the light of Jesus Christ and His deliverance shines forth. What is the only deliverance from the bondage of sin and misery? We know it so well. But may we never tire of hearing it. It is the substitutionary atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ which results in the gift of God, Paul says, which is eternal life. And Paul also says, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And he says in another place that he determined to know nothing among his hearers, his audience, the congregation, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in chapter 3, he says, beginning at verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. This is the only possible way of being delivered from our great sin and misery. And those who look somewhere else, beloved, are wasting precious time. The communion form, which we'll read in a moment, includes these words, for by His death, Christ's death, He has taken away the cause of our eternal death and misery, namely sin, and obtained for us the life-giving Spirit. That we by that Spirit who dwells in Christ as in the head and in us as His members should have true communion with Him and be made partakers of all His riches of life eternal, righteousness, and glory. That's the gracious deliverance that we must truly know. Only when we know what this deliverance and need for it is will we truly desire it. Otherwise, saying, Christ is my Savior, it's only empty words. And if we don't know about this deliverance, again, we won't want it, even if it were offered. Even if it were offered, without knowing it, we will reject it. I've used the illustration before. Even if somebody offers you that cure for cancer, a no-fail cure if you don't know that you have cancer. Well, that's nice. It's nice for someone else. But I don't need it. That's why we first need to know how great is our sin and misery. True faith is to know of that deliverance from all of my sins and misery for the sake of Christ's merits. You see, beloved, the way of redemption is the heart of the Gospel. And to know that there is salvation from such great evil brings true comfort to the child of God. And again, this must be complete from all my sins and misery. Not one can be overlooked. A remodeling job is not enough. A coat of paint will not fix the problem. There must be total life renewal being brought from death to life. Christ's deliverance is the only complete deliverance. Nothing else needs be nor can be added. People of God, this deliverance of grace is beyond compare. And again, what joy it gives. What joy it ought to give. We cannot totally comprehend it. And praise God that we will never really know, as I said a moment ago, by experience. We will never truly know by experience what we have been delivered from. That's knowledge that we should not want to have. I don't want to know what hell and eternal separation from God is like. And I don't have to. because my Savior knows. Yet I know that He has fully paid the price for my sin and misery. I know that He has redeemed me from the power of sin and Satan. By true faith, I have the comfort that in Him it is finished. And the gift of God to me is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So then, what is the result to be in this life of knowing of my sin and misery as well as deliverance from it. It is to be but a small demonstration of what God's people will do for eternity. I say a small demonstration because as the catechism rightly says in another place, even the holiest among us has but a small beginning of new obedience. It will be perfect there. Not here. But joyful living includes knowing how to give thanks. I must know how I am to thank God for such deliverance. When someone does something for you or gives you something, it's customary, boys and girls, to say what? Thank you. That's what your parents teach you. How much more should we thank God for the greatest gift one could ever receive? Again, the burning building. Our life was in eternally grave danger. Demonstrating our gratitude to God for His deliverance through Christ like knowing the first two things is not an option. It's not an if you feel like it or if I feel like it sort of thing. In fact, it will be the automatic response. A response that you cannot help but to overflow with of true faith. Gratitude or thankfulness is the principal end and design of our deliverance from sin and misery. Paul says in Ephesians 1, He, God, chose us in Him, in Christ, having predestined us to adoption. Why? To the praise of the glory of His grace. And how do I learn to know how I am to be thankful? Well, again, God gave to us the greatest resource. God's Word teaches us the proper way of expressing thanks to Him. The Westminster Larger Catechism, we know, says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. to glorify Him and to enjoy Him. We demonstrate thankfulness to God for His work of salvation by doing exactly that, glorifying Him and enjoying Him. You recall, I trust, that the third section of the Heidelberg Catechism includes two major elements. One is prayer. The Catechism reminds us that we say thanks through that holy conversation with God called prayer. And as well, we demonstrate, we show our thanks by striving to keep God's law, to be holy. Thankfulness is spoken and demonstrated in prayer as well as in keeping God's law. That's how we glorify and enjoy Him. Psalm 50 says, Offer to God thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High. Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. True gratitude, true thankfulness is demonstrated by seeking to be and to live righteously. Paul says, chapter 6, verse 13, Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. And in verse 17, But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. And halfway down, verse 19, just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. What is the proper thank offering that redeemed can bring? Paul says in Romans 12, present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. Indeed, beloved, His love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. True thankfulness is the fruit of true faith. It is evidence of true conversion. It is an indication of genuine Christianity. You see, an unthankful Christian is an unconverted Christian and really is no Christian at all. One who truly has the joy of salvation cannot hide it, cannot keep silent about it, and there is no greater joy than living in the way that glorifies and praises God. That joy is to be seen on our face, demonstrated in our life, and beloved, that joy is worth boasting about. It's worth telling. The good news of great joy as we heard about in adult Sunday school that the angels sang to the shepherds. Living in the joy of true comfort includes knowing how great my sins and misery are, knowing how I am set free from my sin and misery, and knowing how I am to thank God for such deliverance. Knowledge of these three is necessary for true comfort both in life and in death. And the Holy Spirit uses this knowledge to make the comfort of Jesus real. Do you know these things? You see, if you don't, then you don't have true comfort. And only when you embrace the host of this table, the Lord Jesus Christ, by grace through faith, will you have true comfort for life and also in death. The opposite of comfort is misery. But that comfort is real and true and guaranteed for those who look to Him. Understand, beloved, that the Lord's table is a symbol of true comfort. It is here that we are reminded of our guilt that nailed Jesus Christ to the cross. It is here that we see the marvelous symbol of God's grace of the broken body and the shed blood of our Lord for our deliverance. And it is here that those who humbly come with confidence demonstrate gratitude, thankfulness to God for such a great salvation. How can life not be joyful as we remember what we were in sin and misery and have the comfort of what Christ has made us to be through such a great salvation? I am God's child. You see, no matter what status you may achieve in this life, no matter what title you may rise to, no matter how you may be known in this life, there's nothing greater than to be able to say this in truth and confidence, I am God's child. That's overall. Coming to the Lord's table is such a joy. And it demonstrates thankfulness to God for such a great salvation received by grace through faith. If you don't have this comfort, then know that you can only have it by looking to the Lord Jesus Christ alone, believing that He is the only Savior who can set you free. and trusting in Him alone for salvation. For you who believe in Him and live with that joy, the feast of comfort is spread. Come, take, eat, be nourished by the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember and believe. Shall we pray?